


teeth

by cervine_salad



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amputation, Anal Sex, Consensual Kink, Consensual Sex, Cybersex, Dildos, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Loss of Limbs, M/M, Masturbation, Medical Conditions, Medical Kink, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Modern Era, Mutual Masturbation, Object Penetration, Oral Sex, Phone Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Sex Toys, Trans Character, Trans Keith (Voltron), Trans Male Character, Trauma, Vagina Dentata, Vaginal, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, m - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-02-27 00:04:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18727585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cervine_salad/pseuds/cervine_salad
Summary: Trans Keith is finally seeking professional medical attention for his... little problem. That problem, which has plagued him ever since sexual maturity, happens to be a case of vagina dentata: a condition so rare it's considered folklore. Dr. Takashi Shirogane, OBGYN, is the first to diagnose and attempt to treat the anomaly. But as they grow closer, the lines between doctor and patient become blurred. And the Teeth can smell blood in the water.Read the prologue here: https://twitter.com/cervine_salad/status/1119106884709916672





	1. Chapter 1

When he gets home, Keith doesn’t look in the box right away. There’s no point, he thinks, of psyching himself out before he’s ready. He tosses it on his bedspread, shuts the door. It’s a blessing to have his own apartment while he’s finishing school -- not that he doesn’t love his dad, but this kind of thing is better off done miles away from anyone whose opinion of him he cares about. Besides, he paid the doctor’s office cash for these, because there’s no way he’s letting this show up on his father’s insurance coverage statement for the month. Nothing will seem amiss about Keith seeing a gynecologist; his father was the one who encouraged him to “take care of what you’ve got” in the first place.

But there are times when Keith doesn’t want to deal with that, and this is one of those times.

He boils pasta, turns on a mindless broadcast of Jeopardy, shouts the answers at no one. Most of those answers are wrong, but he knows a few historical figures. A species of butterfly. A film from the 70s that not even his father has seen.

He eats in front of the television, washes up. He likes to take care of dishes right away. Then there’s brushing his teeth, showering, wandering down the hall to his room naked with his hair still damp, and then… then the box still on his bed.

He glares at it. He can’t believe he actually went through with all of this. He can’t believe someone has seen what’s inside of him.

Seen and not run away screaming, like he should have.

Dr. Shirogane is an oddball. That much he knows. He’s so unlike anyone Keith’s ever met before that he still doesn’t know how to deal with him. Why didn’t the doctor tell his nurse about Keith’s condition? Maybe he has some other motive that’ll have to be dealt with later. Men always have their own agenda.

He’d been hesitant to even go to a male gynecologist -- what cisgender man wants to be a gynecologist when he grows up? It’s always nagged at Keith. But Shirogane is touted online as a preeminent specialist in rare diseases and chronic pain disorders. On experience and knowledge alone, he was the best logical choice. Maybe he’s already married, anyway. Happily married with three kids and can look at vulvas all day and feel nothing for anyone but his loving and devoted wife. Or maybe he and the nurse are fucking. She’s got that kind of energy about her. And he’s…

He’s...

It’s only now sinking in that his first office visit with Dr. Shirogane was the first time a man had ever made him come.

On the exam table. On any table ever. At all. All over Shirogane’s scrubs, soaking the brittle paper sheet under his bare ass, cumming just from a painful insertion and the sound of his voice.

Keith sinks onto the edge of his bed, stares at the box for another minute. Then he drags it closer and pops the lid open.

There are seven of them, all different colors, graduating sizes. Tapered, bullet-like heads with wide round bases for a better grip. The smallest is thin as a chopstick and pastel blue; the largest, which makes Keith’s eyes blow wide, is four centimeters thick and hot pink.

“Oh,” Keith breathes. “Jesus.”

He thumbs shakily over the folded instructions inside. When they unfold, he realizes there are two sets -- one from the manufacturer, typed with illustrative diagrams. Then there’s… something handwritten.

Keith’s ribs ache, his heart pounds. He turns the sheet of computer paper over in his hands, hurries to get the scrawled notations under the lamp light.

_For Keith Kogane --_  
_Follow manufacturer’s instructions -- don’t rush timeline._  
_STOP using if any bleeding or severe pelvic pain_  
_Monitor discharge_

How romantic. He wants to punch himself.

“Monitor discharge?” Keith wrinkles his nose. “Gross. What does that even mean?”

_Email me on Portal with questions._

__

__

_TS_

Questions. I have a lot of questions, Keith thinks glumly. He weighs the concept of further humiliating himself against just going to bed and forgetting about all of this. He doesn’t have to do this, after all. He could toss these in the recycling bin and never go back to that office. He doesn’t like having every woman in the waiting room giving him confused looks. He doesn’t like how it smells. He only likes one thing about it.

Stop it, he commands himself. You already made yourself look like a freak. He’s just doing his job here; he probably can’t wait to get you off his case list, after what you did. It borders on sexual harassment.

Keith sighs, throws himself onto his back on top of the covers. Well, if he’s ever going to actually enjoy sex, he might as well try to enjoy training his cunt to stay open. He reaches for the tiniest dilator, the baby blue chopstick as long as his middle finger. His trembling thighs betray his anxiety, even though he’s alone. Shame pricks red and hot at the tips of his fingers and the cartilage of his ears.

It hurts. He didn’t expect much else. His hole clenches hard at the intrusion, urgent and burning, a steel trap. The sensitive flesh around it aches. He sighs, tries to breathe deep. It’s so small. It’s the smallest one in the bunch. Come on. It’s not that bad. It’s not that bad.

He slides it deeper into his pussy, the hard plastic gliding slow against his tight walls. It feels like he’s being impaled with a candlestick. Once it hits that frightening threshold, Keith knows it, because he feels that strange and powerful maw shut tight around the plastic, the edges grinding softly against the smooth surface of the intrusion. Keith forces past it, biting his bottom lip until he tastes blood.

“Just… take it,” he grunts. “You are not… the boss.”

The whole length goes in, and the wide base lands on labia, and he lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. He stares down at the soft mound of his pussy with its dark curls as if he can see what’s happening underneath.

It’s in. It has to stay there for twenty minutes. He’s in pain, but it’s not killing him; it begins to ebb slowly away as he holds it steady and spreads his legs wider, plants his feet on the bed. It’s not unlike the position he had to hold in the exam chair. He feels the grip inside of him loosen.

He feels… okay. It’s getting more tolerable by the minute. He dares to slide it out of him just a fingertip’s distance and then poke it back in. The motion, gentle but repetitive, becomes almost… soothing. He feels the Bite on the tapered head every time it dips back into him, but it doesn’t hurt. The top of the dilator shaft is rubbing up against something amazing inside of him, and it’s a texture he’s never felt there, a movement, a sensation that makes everything buzz with delight. His clit jumps awake, swells with blood, pulses. Keith dares to reach his free hand down to knead it, and his breath comes faster.

“Fuck,” he breathes, moving the dilator in and out with a quicker rhythm now. It’s almost feverish, compulsive. It slides against the ceiling of his pussy, and he knows now what the feeling is. He caresses his g-spot with the smooth little shaft, bumping the tapered bullet head up against the spongy flesh, gasping as it sends electric pleasure from his belly to his toes. He can’t help himself; he thinks of Dr. Shirogane’s dark, serious eyes, the way he looked up at him from between his legs, the way his fingers roamed Keith’s labia, prodded him just inside his hole. The way he put the speculum inside of him, so attentive and tender, like he was splitting him open with his cock. What does his cock feel like? What would it feel like inside him? He wants the doctor’s fingers inside him, wants his tongue there, wants his cock. Wants him to fuck him hard, fuck this thing out of his pussy, fuck his pussy until it behaves…

Keith comes with a muffled cry, moaning into a mouthful of pillow at his shoulder, the dilator too small and his cunt spasming wildly around it. It’s so good. It’s so nice. Everything tingles. Has it been twenty minutes? Who cares. He could leave this thing in forever. He could totally take all those bigger ones. He could totally take a huge, pulsing, erect --

Nope. No. It hurts again. Keith sighs, exasperated, and pulls the dilator out. The skin around his hole flares up again like a brushfire. 

“Shit,” he whispers, tossing the dilator back on the bedspread and then himself. He keeps his thighs apart to let the air cool his crotch. What the hell is this? The question circles his brain. Pleasure, he answers himself. It’s what pleasure can feel like. 

He doesn’t even know where to begin now. Should he try the insertion again? Not for fun, just strictly for medicinal purposes. Yes. He should probably try to just stick to the bare bones instructions. 

Instead, he opens the patient portal app on his phone. Something… sparks in him. Something exciting, but he doesn’t really know what.

His fingers seem to have a mind of their own. They open a message box.

_Hi, Dr. Shirogane --_

__

_Thank you for ordering the supplies for me. I have some questions about the instructions you wrote. Could we chat tomorrow?_

__

_Keith_


	2. Chapter 2

“Are you ready?” Dr. Shirogane’s gaze is dark and calm. He’s holding Keith’s ankles in the air, just above his shoulders, and his naked chest glimmers with summer sweat. From below him, Keith feels like he might faint; it’s hard to breathe, but he takes the air as it comes, fast and way too warm, like his chest is collapsing.

“I’m ready,” Keith hears himself say. It’s like he’s floating outside of his body. When he feels like Shirogane still hesitates, he whispers, “Yes.”

He feels pain. Or at least, what might be pain if he were still inhabiting his body, but he isn’t. He’s watching them fuck from the ceiling of a strange bedroom, one that isn’t his own. A hotel, maybe. A nice one, maybe with a mirror on the ceiling. Maybe that’s how he’s watching Shirogane thrusting into him, his firm ass clenching as he rocks his dick into Keith’s tight channel. Keith finds his legs are splaying wider, hooking themselves around the man’s waist, pulling him closer. He’s never done this before, but somehow he knows what to do. His body knows. It hurts, but it’s good. He might even be getting wet, creaming on the doctor’s cock, fucked hard into the sheets until -- 

“Keith.” Shirogane moans his name. At least, that’s how it starts -- a low groan full of pleasure and delight. “Keith…”

“Yes,” Keith breathes, ragged. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“Keith, let go.” The doctor’s voice changes. It’s desperate, and not in a good way. “Let go, you’re hurting me.”

“What?” Keith’s starting to sink back into his body. It feels like he’s falling 10 stories off a building back into his cursed flesh. “What’s--”

Shirogane starts to yell. Not words, just strangled cries of fear and pain. He’s moving erratically between Keith’s legs, trying to get away, but he’s trapped.

“Keith, stop! No! I don’t want this!”

“I’m sorry!” Keith screams, his heart thundering, his own fear and shame strangling him like a pair of hands around his throat. “I’m-- I don’t know what to do!”

“Stop! Make it stop-”

“I don’t know how! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

Keith sits bolt upright, sweating, nauseous. His heart slams against the inside of his ribcage, threatening to leap from his throat. He’s in his own bedroom again, breathing ragged and wet, drool quickly drying at the corners of his mouth. He’s drenched in a cold sweat; he shivers, snatches the covers from where they’re bunched up around his feet and wraps himself tight. He can’t even remember the last time he had a night terror like this one. Not since he was a child.

He tries to hold back tears while he catches his breath, stares at the ceiling. It wasn’t real. He keeps repeating it in his head. It wasn’t real, I didn’t hurt him. Dr. Shirogane is asleep in his own bed somewhere, not screaming, not in pain, not bleeding. He’s okay. He’s okay.

Long after he stops panting, after his chest stops heaving, he’s still wide awake. He takes stock of himself, mentally. He tries to clench the muscles inside his cunt; he does it, and it doesn’t hurt. In fact, he can tell by the sticky feeling between his thighs that he’s soaking wet.

Disgusting. He lets out a frustrated sigh. He hates how quickly he lubricates, no matter the situation -- arousal, anger, fear. It’s why he came on the exam table when the doctor first touched him, and he barely even touched him at all.

Keith lets his mind wander. He remembers his first year of college, his first real boyfriend, a guy with cinnamon skin and freckles who called him his “gatito”. Soccer player. Keith had never met someone so funny, so energetic. He was understanding of Keith’s disinterest in sex, but Keith had never told him the truth. He never wanted to, and hoped he wouldn’t need to. Then there was Homecoming Weekend, and the party where they both got trashed, and making out sloppily in his bed. Grinding with clothes on, then clothes off, and Keith thinking maybe just this once, just this once he could let someone in. He didn’t love him, as hard as he tried, but he thought maybe it would change if they had sex. Maybe he’d feel differently, maybe this guy was the one to break the curse. Or so he thought.

Keith had managed to convince him that the resulting cuts all over his fingers had been from a birth control implant. 

He still broke up with Keith. They’d tried to stay friends, awkwardly.

The curse remained.

  
  
  
  


In the morning -- promptly at 8 a.m. -- Keith’s phone buzzes and rouses him from fitful, shallow sleep. It comes in email form from a strange automated address.

Keith,

Hi, I hope you’re well. Not seeing patients today at the clinic, just research for a book. I usually work out of the library at the Medical College, but not the best place to talk. Would you like to meet at Darla’s? Close by the clinic. I’ll be there at 2 p.m. if you’re free.

 

TS

  
  


Keith swallows hard. Meeting up in person? He thought maybe they’d just exchange a few awkward messages and that would be it until his next exam. Or maybe even a brief phone call. But meeting up at a diner? In public? Together?

“It’s not like it’s a fucking date,” he tells himself aloud. Why is his heart still fluttering at the doctor’s email? At best, this is an out-of-office consultation between work tasks, and he’ll get the bill in the mail later. A book? Keith’s eyes revisit the email text. He’s writing a book? Probably about rare conditions. He’s probably just looking for new material, so Keith’s little freak of nature is perfect fodder for his research. That’s all this is. Maybe he’ll even want to take pictures eventually. Keith can’t tell if it’s endearing or infuriating to speculate on it.

Dr. Shirogane,

Sure, I’ll come meet you. I’m free.

Keith

He keeps it agonizingly shorthanded, but what else is there to say? ‘Thanks for inviting me’? ‘What do I owe you’? ‘Can’t wait to see you?’ He’d rather die. He realizes he’s just this guy’s science experiment, but he can’t just bail on him after he offered to help. He’s the only one who’s ever done that.

“I’ll be in your fucking book,” Keith says aloud, grumpily, in the shower while he rakes his fingers through lathered hair. “But I get to pick which nudes you use. And you’re paying me for them, Mr. Bro-Ass, Rich-Ass, Sexy-Ass Doctor.” He grimaces at his own words. “What cis guy would want to be a gynecologist, anyway? And you think I’m the freak. Weirdo.”

He blow-dries his hair, which he rarely ever does. He slips into tight jeans that he knows make his legs look a mile long and his ass look perfectly lifted and plump like a ripe peach. He pins one side of his long hair back, even puts on a tank top that doesn’t totally hide his mastectomy scars. He battles a burning resentment deep inside, a confusion he’s never felt before. With men his age, he’s opted for making himself as undesirable as possible. He keeps them at arm’s length. But with this one -- someone who might actually be able to cure him -- he begrudgingly has the urge to be alluring. To be liked. To be… desired. Certain men had that kind of appeal to him, drew that kind of ire from him. Not many, but some.

  
  
  
  


“Keith, hi.”

It startles him nearly out of his skin, so close he fights the urge to skitter away like a rabbit. He’s been standing just inside the front door of the diner, scanning the bright red booths full of families and old people and college kids skipping class. 

He turns, albeit hoping he doesn’t look horrified. Dr. Shirogane looks… different. Way different. For the first time, Keith is seeing him out of his dark blue scrubs and white coat. In regular, normal-guy clothes: a slightly rumpled white t-shirt and jeans, a watch (who wears watches anymore?), white tennis shoes. He looks clean, tall, and tired. Keith is flustered immediately, and the rant he planned in the shower is wiped clean from his brain.

“Uh,” he says. “Sorry.”

Shirogane looks like he doesn’t know why Keith is apologizing, but he’s good about it. “No, you’re fine. I got a booth already, is that okay?” He points to one that borders the big glass windows, isolated by an empty booth on either side. 

“Yeah! Fine.” Keith notices his voice is venturing into a higher register with nervousness. He clears his throat and follows the doctor dumbly across the diner and slides into the booth across from him.

There’s already two mugs of coffee on the table. Shirogane follows his gaze. “Ah, sorry -- you told me you drink two a day, so I got them ahead of time. You don’t have to drink it.”

Keith wants to scream, with some unidentified emotion, knowing that he knows this from Keith’s patient paperwork.

“No, it’s… I want it,” he says quickly. “Thanks.” He drags it closer to him and wraps his hands around it just to feel the comforting warmth on his palms.

“I hope this isn’t weird.” Shirogane tugs a pad of paper and pen from the briefcase sitting on the seat next to him. “It was just easier to meet here than at the clinic, but if you’d rather make an appointment, I’ve --”

“This is fine.” Keith lifts the steaming mug to his lips, sips from it, measures the man’s reaction. He’s as unreadable as ever.

“Oh, okay. So, how are you feeling about the current treatment?”

“First off,” Keith interjects, a little coyly, “Does my insurance cover this talk?”

For a heartbeat, Shirogane seems to lose his composure; he hesitates, then laughs. It’s the first time he’s laughed, in a supremely human way, in Keith’s presence. “Yeah, I suppose I should have clarified that beforehand -- don’t worry about this discussion, it’s on the house. Like the coffee.”

Keith cracks an anxious smile, glances at the window. “That’s nice of you.”

“Mm, it’s not really being nice.” Shirogane takes a sip from his own mug. “I’m not billing you for it, so it doesn’t really count as a visit in terms of your protections as a patient. If it oversteps your boundaries, I do apologize.”

 

“I’m all right with it,” Keith reassures him, even though he’s not even sure anymore. “Besides, it’s safer in here than in your office. At least you can’t make me take my cunt out in public.”

 

He likes that Shirogane checks his face carefully, realizes he’s making a joke, and then laughs again. He likes the way the doctor smiles. Perfect teeth. Warm. 

 

“Which reminds me,” Shirogane adds, “I forgot to give you a prescription for lubricant. You can get the generic version over the counter, though -- if you want, I”ll pick it up for you when we’re done here. My mistake, so I’ll pay for it.” He’s back to sounding businesslike. Professional. There’s no playfulness in his clinical stare.

 

Keith still hopes he’s not blushing. “Oh, uh… Don’t worry about it, I have… some at home, or… If there’s a specific brand you had in mind, I’ll get it myself.”

 

“What brand do you use?”

If it were any other man, Keith would find it invasive. Horrible. He’d get up and run out. But it’s Dr. Shirogane. He’s still his doctor even though he’s in streetwear. Right?

 

“I use Pearl-Glide,” he says, his voice soft enough that surrounding customers won’t hear. “I have a lot of it left, since… since I don’t really need it to jerk off, and I don’t use it for… for penetration. Obviously. At least not until now.”

 

Shirogane nods. “That brand is fine. Water-based is always good. If you want something with lidocaine in it to calm the pain, I can write the prescription. Just for future reference.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“I know you might not want to ask me all your questions in a public place,” Shirogane says softly. “Feel free to email me again today, and I’ll get back to you right away. I just thought I’d see you to check in on you. But you look good.”

 

“Oh. Yeah.” It’s just clinical, Keith tells himself. He tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear without thinking about it. “Thanks. I’ll do that.” He hides his face behind the coffee. “What about your book?”

 

“What about it?”

 

“What’s it about?” Keith tries not to sound like he’s prying. But he’s prying.

 

“Ah, it’s just something I’ve been working on since I finished medical school.” He waves a hand dismissively like it’s nothing. “It’s a memoir, I guess. A clinical perspective on my own health, especially after the accident.”

 

“Are you okay?” It comes out before Keith can pull it back. Then he remembers and wants to kick himself. He glances down at Shirogane’s prosthetic arm and wishes he didn’t look. “Sorry. Sorry, it looks… it looks good, so I forget.”

 

“It’s all right.” Shirogane smiles. “There are things about me that aren’t accidents, too. Reasons why I went into this profession, and why my professional and personal lives aren’t always rigidly separate.”

 

I knew it, Keith thinks with a tiny stab of betrayal.

 

“So you’re writing about your patients, too?” He struggles to hold a neutral tone.

 

“Some of them. No identifying information, of course, and nothing that can be traced back to a specific person. I value the privacy of my patients above all else.”

 

“Am I in there?”

 

The question seems to catch the doctor off-guard, but only for half a beat, and the expression is barely there. Keith imagines he sees a glimmer of… something in Shirogane’s eyes.

 

“No, you’re not.” He straightens the paper placemat in front of him. “I’d ask your written permission before I used any information like that.”

 

“Oh.” Is this… disappointment? Is this really disappoint I’m feeling? He feels like his face is on fire. There are so many things he can say in this moment, little things, flirtatious things, funny things. Be cool. Be funny. Just… don’t be weird. “Well, um… thanks.” I said don’t be weird!

 

“You bet.” Shirogane checks his watch. “Hey, sorry to run out on you, but I’ve got a meeting with the supervising doc in a few minutes, so I’ve gotta split.”

 

“Sure.” Keith fights down a wave of strange yearning. “No problem.”

 

“Email me,” Shirogane says, packing his things back into the briefcase. “Really, I mean it. Any time.”

 

It’s odd, the way the words are like a cooling salve for that burn inside of Keith.

 

“Thanks.”

 

“I’ll pay at the front -- do you want something to eat before I go?”

 

“No, no, I’m okay. Thank you, though, Dr. Shirogane." He says it on a whim.

 

“Cool. Talk to you soon.” The doctor shoulders his briefcase, gives a little wave goodbye. It’s so endearing Keith just smiles and then turns to the window again. "Hey, Keith?"

 

At the sound of his name on those lips, Keith whips around. "Yeah?"

 

"Call me Shiro, if you want." The doctor smiles. "You don't need to be formal with me."

 

"Sure."

 

He watches Dr. Shirogane -- Shiro -- duck out of the front doors of the diner, glide across the parking lot, cross the street to the medical campus. He feels hot, suddenly, and it's not just from the simmering coffee; he slides out of the booth and makes his way to the single restroom at the back of the diner, working his jeans down as a sharp pain emanates from his opening. He cusses, quietly, and works his pants down until he can stick a hand in his underwear.

His fingertips meet with a cool, smooth surface, small and hard like a triangular pearl, but serrated on two sides. He pulls it out of his briefs, looks at it under the weird yellow light of the bathroom.

It's a tooth. A tiny little shark tooth, glistening with the slick that's made a small damp pool in his underwear. It's the first time he's ever looked straight at one, the first time one has ever fallen out of the monster's mouth in his cunt. Ugly. Horrifying. But somehow... pretty.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

It’s funny, in a way, how it feels almost natural: sending Dr. Shirogane a message that night, just to tell him he picked up a different kind of lubricant because it looked nicer, and asking if he - “Shiro,” the intimate name he’d granted Keith the blessing to use -- thinks it’s okay. Medically. Clinically. He doesn’t tell him that he found the tooth in his underwear. That’s not something he wants to say in an email.

And the next morning, too. He wakes up to a reply that he’d stupidly fallen asleep and missed. 

Totally fine. No worries. Should work great. -TS

Is he toying with him? It seems so detached. Keith looks at it for a minute, then tosses his phone on his bed. He’s not sure why it gives him the pang of frustration that it does. The text is perfectly professional. Maybe that’s what unsettles him about it, after meeting the doctor technically outside of work. What was that all about, anyway? He can’t possibly be that daft, having invited Keith out and then being so distant?

I’m crazy, Keith tells himself while he ducks into the shower. He brings the hard plastic tube in with him, along with the lubricant. The shower hisses and steams and Keith leans against the cold tile wall and props one foot up on the edge of the tub. So what if the guy offered to see him outside of his clinic hours? He was just being nice. The last thing you should be doing is complaining that someone’s good at maintaining professional boundaries. Get a grip. He frowns and grits his teeth and squeezes a generous dollop of lubricant onto the tube, then slides it into his cunt.

It hurts. Fuck, it hurts. He hasn’t tried to do this standing up yet. Probably for good reason. Probably because that’s not how he’s supposed to do this. He stuffs it further into himself anyway, wincing as the dull tip slides against the back wall of his channel. It feels like the tip of a knife. He gives up and extracts it, tosses it out of the shower onto the bath mat.

He hurries to towel himself off afterward, particularly his hands, so he can plug away at his phone screen.

Good morning -- can I see you today? Something new happened and I can’t text about it. I’ll work with whatever appointment schedule you’ve got. Thanks - Keith

Not even five minutes pass.

Hi, Keith -- I’m not seeing patients today. Call me? Let’s figure something out. -TS

Phone call. Great. He hates the phone. Keith bites his lip, drops his damp towel, sinks down onto the sofa in the living room with nothing on. It occurs to him suddenly that he doesn’t often see himself naked. He doesn’t have a full mirror anywhere in the apartment and he rarely sees his whole naked body at once. Looking down at it, he can’t tell: what does it all really look like? How does this guy -- Shiro -- how does Shiro see him? He’s never thought this hard about it with anybody else.

He swallows his fear and presses the little phone icon in the messaging app. It’s a little disappointing to see “Unknown Number” on the calling screen, but why would the doctor want patients to have his real phone number? That’d be stalker city.

“Hello? This is Takashi.” 

Keith swallows again. It feels like he can’t get air. 

“Hello?” Shiro says again. It makes Keith’s heart thud in the back of his throat. “Keith?”

Fuck. Of course he knows. Technology. That sucks.

“Hi. Yeah, it’s me,” he manages. He wants to punch himself. “Sorry. It’s Keith.”

“Hey.” The doctor sounds unfazed, which seems normal for him, and it makes Keith feel like a fucking freak. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

It nearly stops his heart right then and there, just that question. When was the last time anyone had asked if he was okay and really meant it?

“I’m…” Keith struggles to control his voice. “I don’t know. It worked fine yesterday. I got it in, it was all fine, but today I just…” It comes tumbling out like vomit. “I couldn’t do it. It hurt so bad. And I try to think myself away from it, I try to think of things that make me happy, but I couldn’t think of anything. I just thought about how depressed and scared I am. I remembered this guy I used to go out with, and if anyone was going to get me over this I thought it would be him, but it didn’t work. And I just... Sorry, I’m going on and on.” He feels the pressure of tears behind his eyes, threatening to burst free like faulty faucet.

“Keith, do something for me right now.” It’s calm. Warm.

“Okay.”

“Just take a deep breath in, and let it out. Slowly. Just take a deep breath.”

Keith has to focus, hard, but he does it. He drags the air in through his nose and huffs it out through his mouth, probably directly into the microphone, but it’s probably okay.

“Okay,” Keith rasps.

“Don’t be sorry for telling me all this. You have a lot going on right now. It’s tough to manage it all. You’re a student, and you work, and you have a painful medical condition. Don’t beat yourself up.”

Oh, yeah, Keith thinks. The “condition.” Funny how he sometimes forgets it, when it’s quiet. When he isn’t trying to have sex, it’s like it isn’t even there. But it is there. He’s not crazy.

“Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No. Why would I think that?”

“You saw it, didn’t you? Why haven’t you told anyone?”

“I saw someone with a history of trauma and the inevitable psychosomatic symptoms of that trauma.” His voice is level, but self-assured. Decisive. It’s comforting. “That’s all anyone needs to know. Your diagnosis is vaginismus, and that’s what we’re treating. The specifics of that are nobody’s business but your own.”

“Shiro,” Keith says, weakly.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for not, like, telling the government or something.”

He hears him pause, then chuckle softly. “Wouldn’t dream of it. I’m bound by my professional oath to preserve patient confidentiality… That said, are you about to tell me you’re also from another galaxy?”

“I could be.” Keith realizes he’s suddenly more at ease. Flirtatious, almost. He kicks his legs to the top of the couch and lounges upside-down. “But your oath only applies to humans, so if I was an alien I’d never tell you, anyway.”

“You could tell me.” Shiro mimics the playful edge in Keith’s voice. “I wouldn’t turn you in. I’d try to help you get back to your planet.”

“What if I didn’t want to go back?” Keith closes his eyes. Before the doctor can answer, he opens them again and adds, “Hey, I swear I had a legitimate reason for calling you. I do have something that I want you to see.”

“Oh.” Suddenly serious again. “Are you hurt?”  
“No.” Keith feels a tiny smile pull at the corner of his mouth. “I’m not. Thanks. It’s, um… It’s hard to explain, without…”

“Yeah, I understand.” Keith hears papers shuffling in the background. “I’m off today, but I can get you an exam room if you want me to take a look.”

“Oh.” Keith feels a twinge of guilt. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…”

“No, no. I don’t mind.” Shiro hesitates. “Really. I don’t usually do that, but…” There’s a brief silence. Keith’s never heard him at a loss for words. “Your case is important to me. Does that make you uncomfortable?”

“No.” Keith tries to keep his smile from his voice. “I appreciate it.”

“Okay. Can you get to the clinic for two p.m.?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll see you then.”

“Thanks.”

 

Strange. It’s all strange, the way he hangs up the phone call and tosses his phone to the other side of the couch, the way he feels his legs drifting apart, splayed out over the top of the couch. The way he can already feel how wet he is, wet from Shiro’s voice, his assurances, the husky depth of his voice in that barrel of a chest. Keith thinks of how he looked in his white t-shirt, the swell of his pectorals, the coy divot of his clavicle just below the crew neck collar, the hot pulse in his thick neck. He thinks of his hands. One made of flesh, the other a prosthetic of metal and flexible polymer, the hand large enough to match the other, robotic but stunningly human. He thinks of the way the doctor touches him, gentle and precise, no hesitation, no fear. Like he knows exactly what Keith’s body needs, like he’s just waiting for the right time to give it to him.

Keith shudders as his own fingers tease his clit, rubbing the sensitive knob in quick circles, the tip of his middle finger teasing the plush little cockhead that hormones helped to grow. His vagina might protest to nearly everything, but not his eager little dick; he’s so hard, it surprises him how big he is. Insistently, three fingers stroke the throbbing length while Keith pants and moans aloud, allowing himself a kind of pleasure that he doesn’t have to overthink. It swells up into his belly, that beautiful liquid burn of desire, simmering inside him from navel to thighs as it builds. 

“Fuck,” he whispers, his thighs trembling while suspended above him. He grinds his ass down against the sofa, cants his hips, humps the plush cushion between his legs. The more he does it, the better it feels; he hooks his knees more firmly over the back of the couch and rolls his drooling pussy against the cushion, over and over until he’s breathing harder with the effort. The way his clit and tender lips brush the textured fabric, the way his cunt flutters and pulses with pleasure every time he rubs it hard against the cushion -- he wonders if this is what fucking feels like. At least, if it’s close. It must be like this, with his hips rolling feverishly, his fingertips kneading his clit, his pussy gaping and weeping around a hard cock that sinks into him with every thrust. A big, plush cock with a bright red mushroom head and a shaft that gently, achingly splits him open. Shiro. Shiro’s cock, stretching him wide like Shiro’s speculum did on the exam table, but so, so much better. Softer. Warmer. He must have a beautiful cock. So big the tip could brush things inside of him that he can’t even identify.

“Unh, Shiro,” Keith moans. He’s hurtling toward a peak he’s never reached before. “Shiro, oh, fuck, oh, my god, Shiro!”


	4. Chapter 4

"Slide down a little for me?" The doctor murmurs. He's glancing over Keith's legs, Keith thinks he can tell. But he could be imagining it.

"Uh, okay," Keith stutters. He's already shivering in the exam gown, the white room cold and sterile around him, already making him anxious. He scoots his ass down to the edge of the exam chair. "Um, there's also… I have it in my bag."

"Have what?" Dr. Shirogane gives him a curious look, glancing up from the little rolling tray table with the speculum and lubricant.

"Ah… you'll know when you see it," Keith mumbles, purposefully vague. How is he supposed to introduce something like that? 

Shirogane slides his rolling chair across the room to Keith's bag, tossed to the floor in the corner. He lifts it and rolls back over to Keith. The motions are almost… cute, Keith thinks, not without feeling his face grow warmer.

The doctor holds up his bag, and Keith digs through the front pocket for the little resealable plastic baggie that holds the strange little tooth, hardly the size of Keith's pinkie fingernail, and with the same faint shine.

When he sees it, Shirogane lowers Keith's bag slowly to the floor, never taking his eyes off the clear plastic that holds the tooth.

"It's real," Keith clarifies softly, as if he's about to be doubted.

"You lost one," the doctor responds, almost a whisper. Keith revels in the way he takes the little bag gently into his hands and stares down at it, almost like it'll break under his touch. "Wow."

"You believe me?"

Shirogane looks up into his face. It suddenly occurs to Keith that Shiro is sitting between his legs and looking up at him like that again. He prays he doesn't lubricate in front of him. 

"Why wouldn't I?"

"It's just…" Keith swallows. "This has never happened to me before. I've never lost one."

"Did you realize it, when it happened? Was it painful?" The doctor holds his gaze. He doesn't stare down at his pussy, which Keith actually finds comforting.

"Yeah," Keith answers, a little weakly. "I felt it. It wasn't terrible, but… it did hurt."

"And you had a painful time with the dilator," Shirogane added. "Was that before or after?"

Keith hesitates. He certainly doesn't want to lie. He also doesn't want to confront what might be the truth - that there’s a common denominator in these new experiences, and Shirogane is the only new thing in his life that makes him feel anything.

"Right after you left the diner yesterday," Keith says slowly. "That's when I felt it. I went to the bathroom to check it out, and I found it in… in my underwear.” What a stupid word to have to say out loud in front of him. It’s embarrassing, but he can’t unsay it now.

"So you didn't try to loosen it or anything?" Shiro meets his gaze, blinks.

"No." Keith can't help but make a disgusted face. "I wouldn't do that. I don't even touch myself in there." He hates that he even said it. Immediately. "Sorry."

"Don't be." Shirogane sets the little tooth in its bag on the countertop next to him. "There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I'd like to send this to the lab for some tests, if you don’t mind... I have to be honest, I'm not sure what kind of tests. But I'll figure out some things we can perform without damaging it."

"Okay."

"I know a technician there personally who'll do it for me. I'd trust her with my own life. Your secret will be safe there with her."

"Thanks."

"Which brings me to the next thing I wanted to talk to you about." The doctor gets a seriousness about him. He leans his elbows onto his knees, folds his hands. He's trying to look relaxed, cool and calm like he always is, but Keith can tell something is coming. "I want to refer you to my supervising physician here at the clinic. I think we should put the dilator treatment on hold until we figure out more about the physiology of your condition, and he has double my experience in rare disorders. He's seen everything. I wouldn't be surprised if he's even seen someone like you before. I think he could help you." 

He has to stop talking, because Keith's face flushes bright with shock, his eyes welling up with hot, frustrated tears, his knees knocking together with that terrible combination of shame and hyperactive medical clinic air conditioning.

"Keith?" He prompts. Gentle. But it feels like a length of barbed wire dragged in circles around his heart.

"You think I'm a monster," Keith chokes out. "I knew it, I knew you did."

"No, I don't."

"Then why can't you keep seeing me?" Keith knows he's overreacting, knows he's crying for the most ridiculous reasons, knows he's stomping professional boundaries into the ground. He stomps them anyway. "You’re just going to give up on me? I don’t want to see someone else. I'm scared. Am I really that disgusting to you? Am I untreatable?

Shirogane stares at him, levelly. Something in his expression changes, slowly but surely. His look turns pained. He lets Keith shed a few more tears and brush them roughly away with his fingers before he speaks again.

"Keith, I'm… I’m not suggesting you see someone else because I find you repulsive." He clears his throat. Keith’s eyes find his, almost instinctively. "It's... quite the opposite, really. Which is why I don't think it's best for you to see me."

"What are you saying?" Keith asks. He hopes it comes across softer than it sounded in his own ears, without as much desperation.

"I'm saying…" Shirogane wrings his hands out in front of him. It's the first time Keith's ever seen him look nervous. "I'm saying the way I feel about you is a violation of my professional code of ethics. And I can't, in good conscience, treat you as a patient when what I feel is…" He sighs, makes a gesture of dismissiveness. "I want you to get the best care possible. And if that's something I can't give, I have to accept that and hand over the reins to someone who can. Dr. Holt is my mentor and a good man. I trust him, and I want you to know you can, too."

Keith's eyes narrow, then widen as he listens. New tears come, but they're not from anger. He's still trembling, and he wonders briefly what it might be like to be folded in Shiro's arms, pressed to his chest, his warm neck. Would he want to hold him? Would he want to comfort a freak with his healing hands? What if he sullied them?

“No,” Keith murmurs, and it’s so quiet that Shiro shoots him a questioning look. “No,” Keith repeats, “I don’t accept that. I need to know… I need to know your true feelings.” He stares into the doctor’s face intently, and to his surprise -- and deep down, his delight -- Shirogane matches his intensity, his focus. He could fall headfirst into those deep grey eyes and never claw his way back out again.

“I thought you were a unique case that I was interested in from an academic perspective.” Shiro leans back in his chair. “I wanted to help you feel more comfortable in your skin. Be at peace with your body. Feeling like your physical form doesn’t truly belong to you, or isn’t in your control, is a level of hell that most people never see.” 

Keith watches, silently, as Shiro holds up his prosthetic arm. The motion, in the silence, makes the tiniest whirring sound, its mechanisms responding to the doctor’s neurons, that unseen network of the brain that makes the body move. Like magic, but it isn’t.

“I still have flashbacks about the accident,” Shirogane continues, almost meditative in his low, measured voice. “I was driving home from a volunteer shift at a hospital. I was a third-year medical student, exhausted from working around the clock and studying for exams at the same time. Working the trauma unit where I saw as many dead people as live ones.” He pauses, looking away, then back to Keith again. “I was so tired that night. I knew I should have just called for a ride. My partner, at the time, I figured he was asleep at home and I didn’t want to call him and wake him up. He was studying hard, too, to be an aerospace engineer.” 

Keith’s ears perk up at the intimate mention. Shiro said ‘partner.’ And ‘he.’ A man? A man… where is he now? 

“I fell asleep while I was driving. Went over the center line, into the oncoming lane. You know, it was so late at night, and it was a dark freeway out in the middle of nowhere, you’d think nobody would be there at that exact wrong place, wrong time -- right?” He’s looking into his hands, now, lacing his fingers together, clenching them. “But the Universe can be cruel in ways that are just… unimaginable to you, until they happen. And then there’s no going back. You make one stupid mistake, you live with it forever.”

Keith hangs on his every word, silent, tense. He realizes he’s gripping his knees and loosens his fingernails from his skin. 

“That’s how you lost your arm?” He asks it barely above a whisper.

“I wish I would have lost more than that. I’d have deserved it.” He takes in a heavy breath. “There was a young couple, not too much older than me at the time, coming the other way. They were heading to the hospital I’d just come from.”

Keith thinks he knows where it’s going, and it makes him feel sick, but he swallows hard and listens for it. 

“The woman was in labor. They were speeding, but they had a reason to be. They had a baby on the way, and it would have been born that night, alive, to two living and loving parents, if it wasn’t for me.” He breathes a long sigh. “So, you want to talk about which one of us is the monster here? It isn’t you, Keith. When I look at you… I see a tiger in a cage. And I don’t want to be your cage. Beautiful things deserve to be free.”

Keith lets his eyes close, feeling the pain, the blissfulness of it, wash over him like a white wave. It ebbs and flows like a tide for a long moment between them. When he opens his eyes again, Shirogane is looking at him, not without apprehension.

“Shiro,” Keith says, and the name tastes so sweet that it practically stings, like sour candy coated in colorful sugar. “You need to forgive yourself. You have to. You’re a good person.”

The older man manages a smile with one corner of his mouth. On anyone else, it would look disingenuous, but on him, it’s strikingly honest. “Then you should, too. And I’ll hold you to it, if you do the same for me.”

“I will.” Keith nods, slowly. He takes a moment to let the gravity of the conversation sink in, and they both shift awkwardly in their places. Keith is suddenly very aware that he’s still naked under a threadbare clinic gown and presses his knees tighter together. “And by the way,” he ventures, “if the point of you telling me all this was to warn me of the dangers of being involved with you, or something… it didn’t work.” Keith’s sharp blue gaze flickers down at the other man from under his thick dark lashes. “You can’t try to scare me away and then call me beautiful in the same breath. I’m just going to want you more.”

Shirogane looks like if he were drinking at this very moment that he’d spit it all out. So there are, indeed, weak points in his steel composure. Keith has found a crevice that he can get his fingers in, like a crack in a honey pot, and it’s irresistible.

“You... want me?” It’s quiet with disbelief.

“Jesus,” Keith hisses, exasperated, “God, how can such a smart guy be so oblivious?"

“I’m making you an appointment with Dr. Holt,” Shiro announces, rolling his chair to the desktop computer and keying it in.

“Come with me?” Keith murmurs. He stares expectantly until Shiro glances at him over his shoulder.

“Sure. Of course I will.”

“And,” Keith adds, tucking a lock of black hair behind his ear without thinking. “If you can’t be my doctor, can you... be my friend?”

Shiro smiles, and his gaze darts away for just a fraction of a second, and it’s a look of bashfulness that drives Keith wild. He’s never seen it before. He wants to see it again. He wants to get the older guy flustered, flushed, tripping over his words, exposing his own weaknesses left and right. He wants to figure out what makes him click, what makes him laugh, what keeps him up at night. What he thinks about when he’s alone in his bed, -- is he ever alone? -- what gets him hot and horny and panting like a dog for more…

“I’d like that,” Shirogane responds, jolting Keith out of his ill-timed fantasies. “Friends can take each other to dinner, can’t they?”

“Absolutely,” Keith confirms. “Yes, absolutely, they can. Any day of the week.”


End file.
